San Francisco Vacation

Sorry for the lack of blog posts recently, I've been in San Francisco on a fabulous vacation with Matt! Only downfall was we had to leave the puppies at home and I missed them like crazy! I called our dogsitter almost every night to make sure everything was okay. I also cried when we left so I felt like a huge baby, but everything ended up being fine.

Well, other than the fact that most of our clothes ended up in the backyard. Our dogsitter had some teeth removed and took some painkillers. When he woke up all of the clothes they could reach and everything they could find from the bathrooms was outside in the yard covered in dirt and grass. Most of it was just clothes which is all washable so not a big deal. But they did manage to destroy one pair of my shoes, a pair of slippers, and my FAVORITE stuffed animal. I'm pretty bummed about the stuffed animal, but Matt promised we'd fix it.

San Francisco was fabulous though. It was beautiful weather the ENTIRE time we were there. It was 70's and 80's the entire week and gets chilly at night like it does in Colorado. Couldn't have asked for better weather while we were there. Matt went to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and had a blast. We went to Pier 39 and saw the sea lions, Brooklyn Bridge, and the most fabulous sports shop ever. Literally has every single sports team EVER. Noni and Papa bought us matching KU sweatshirts which are crazy comfortable! We spent most of the week lounging around and watching TONS of movies. Only downfall is that on the day we were supposed to go to Napa Valley (i couldn't wait) I got food poisioning and ended up in the bathroom for a majority of the night. Total bummer on that one.

We watched TONS of movies this week and I'll post a couple of quick reviews if anybody was planning on watching them. I watched "Whip It" on my ipod on the way to California. It stars Drew Barrymore and Ellen Paige. Ellen Paige has an extremely strict mother who wants her to compete in pageants for scholarship money. She finds a brochure for roller derby and competes. She ends up becoming one of the stars of roller derby. It was a really good movie! It had lots of cute and quirky moments. Ellen Paige is fabulous in it. I give it 3.5/5 stars.

I also watched "The Lovely Bones" with Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg's daughter "Suzi" gets murdered by a neighbor. It's a good story about what happens after death. She shows herself in many ways to the family and ends up helping her dad figure out who murdered her. A few weird twists, but overall a decent film. As long as you are ready for some depressing moments. I give it 3/5 stars.

We watched the "A-Team" with Matt's dad and this ended up being WAY better than I thought it would be. The reviews weren't fabulous, but as an action movie...it really rocks. It stars Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper. Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper make this movie. The action scenes are all really well done and the scene at the end is absolutely incredible. Definite 4/5 stars.

We also saw "Toy Story 3" which makes us seem pretty lame, but considering how much I love children's movies I had to see this. It stars all of the original cast, but some additions. Andy goes to college and the team gets dropped off and donated to a daycare. The dictator teddybear sends them in with the toddlers. Good movie with tons of cute and quirky parts. Definite must see 4/5 stars.

On Friday we saw "Grownups" starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, and Rob Schneider. They become friends over a championship basketball team and when their coach dies- it brings them and their families back to the cabin they spent time in at as kids. Lots of funny parts, some crudeness. 3.5/stars

If you wanted to watch one of these, now you know! Happy Reading! And now for some San Fran photos!

Happy "early" Father's Day!

I know I'm a bit early for Father's Day, but since I'll be in California on Sunday I figured I would write my incredibly meaningful blog today.

I know everybody says that their dad is the best, well mine truly is. Ever since I can remember he's been there for me. He may not have always said his true emotions outloud, but it just made the times he did express it that much more meaningful.

My dad has taught me so much about life and how to live it. As a father to seven kids, he always made sure we had what we needed, even if it meant struggling a bit to make it work. He put six of us through college and is currently working on the seventh. I don't know too many men who could do something quite like that.

He's taught me to be responsible, well-spoken, polite, and most-importantly hard-working. It is one of the best things my dad could have ever taught me. While I was working 40 hours a week and going to college full-time I had quite a few people wonder how I could manage. It comes from my dad's hard-working attitude where if you want it bad enough and work hard enough to get there, it's all worth it in the end!

My parents were never the showing emotion type. We didn't really say "I love you" or hug everytime we saw eachother, but the times that I saw emotion from my dad are some of the best and happiest moments of my life. For example, the day of my KU graduation. He gave me a big hug and told me how proud he was of me. Explained how difficult it is to graduate from such a good school. I had tears in my eyes.
Another time, I had flown back to KS from CO for a bridal shower in May 2009. He brought me back to the airport and walked me to my gate. Gave me a giant hug and told me how much he loved me and just wanted me to be happy. I still cry thinking about this time. And the most recent one- as he was walking me down the aisle on my wedding day. He was trying to make me cry and I was avoiding it like crazy! We got to end of the aisle, he gave me a hug and kiss, told me he loved me and walked away. And that was that.

These moments remain some of the happiest moments with my dad. Not to mention all of my memories from when I was little. I'd put on my railroad hat and sit on his lap. He looked quite a bit different then- with the long hair and sideburns! He'd pull out my favorite book and read to me for hours. This is one of my favorite things about my dad. No matter how busy he was, he always had time for his baby girl. And now that I've moved away and got married, I still remember the important things. Like no matter what he'll always be there for me, to help me through life, and to guide me in everyway he possibly can. Because he's my dad, and he's the best.

I love you dad, and thank you for absolutely everything you've ever done for me.
Happy Father's Day!

Everything Dad


A little girl needs her daddy
To love her with manly charm,
To soothe her when she’s hurt,
And keep her safe from harm.


A girl needs her dad
To show her a man who’s good,
To help her make right choices,
As only a father could.


A woman needs her father
Just to be aware,
He’ll always be there for her
To sustain her and to care.


You’ve been all these things, Dad.
I hope that you can see
How much I treasure you;
You mean everything to me.


By Joanna Fuchs










My favorite railroad hat!


Me being cranky, and my dad in the "reading chair." This was my favorite chair for reading.




At my first communion. Look how young my parents look!!!

I promised!

So I promised I'd post some utterly adorable photos of the puppies so I'm going to do it. Luckily we got our new power cord for the labtop today after Bella chewed through the other one. *rolls eyes*

The only exciting piece of news I have to share is...I GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!!! Finally KU decided to send in my transcript and I was accepted into Baker University's MBA program! I'm pretty excited, yet nervous to begin school again. But I know it will bring bigger and better things for our future. On a related note I had to fill out the FAFSA today on my own. I kind of had a feeling I'd have some issues and I did so I called the only person I knew could help, my daddy. I'm not sure what I would do without him on days like today. I'll be sure to write a fabulous father's day post before I leave for CA on Saturday. I'll write another longer post later on when I'm not so exhausted. But for now...PUPPY PHOTOS!!









Bella absolutely loves to sleep underneath things. Here she is underneath the coffee table. She also really loves being underneath the kitchen table and end tables. She's quite the strange one!



Yeah, so they're pretty freakin' cute!

I swear!

I swear I'll start adding photos soon!! I just keep writing blogs on EVERY computer EXCEPT for the one where all my cute puppy photos are. But I promise, I'll add some soon.

Speaking of cute puppies, we think Bella is sick. For the last three or four days she's been acting fairly strange. Usually she's energetic, super affectionate, and chaotic. Lately she's been being quite the loner and going off into places to sleep away from us. If you knew her you would know this is weird. Usually both dogs, Buster and Bella, lay by us in the living room and follow us around the house.
In the morning she's fine. She'll come into the house before we leave for work running around the house and being funny. Even at lunch, she was still acting normally. But when we got home from work at 5 she would be completely different. She'd come in to eat and then go outside like normal, but when she came back in she would find the most isolated spot, recently her kennel, the laundry room, kitchen, or bathroom. Last night when she was laying in the bathroom by herself and wouldn't even lift her head to acknowledge us talking to her I knew something was wrong. So I'm taking her to the vet today. I just hope nothing is seriously wrong. Like I don't worry about them all the time when I'm gone anyway!

In other news, we leave for California next Saturday!!! I am so excited to be spending a solid eight days in San Francisco with Matt's family. So far on the agenda, a trip to WaterWorld with Matt's cousins, a trip to downtown San Fran., and a whole day in Napa Valley!!! Finally me being addicted to wine will pay off! Now I just need to figure out how to ship an expensive bottle of white wine back to CO. Since we don't check baggage ($20/bag, seriously?) I can't bring it back on the plane. I'm hoping if I package it real well through UPS or USPS that it'll make it in one piece back to CO. Luckily one of our friends through the newspaper will be house/dog sitting, which took a complete load off my chest. I was worried about spending $400 for a kennel so this really helps! I've already expressed that I'll probably be calling at least once a day to check on the dogs. I miss them already.

I really need to find a way to get over this though. I miss the dogs all day when I'm at work so being gone for 8 days without them is probably going to kill me. I can't even imagine when we have kids. Bringin them to daycare is going to absolutely kill me!!

Other than that, there isn't much news going on in the Lindberg home. After putting it off for almost a full month, we finally finished cleaning our old apartment and handed in our keys. We moved out in mid-April and had until the end of May to clean it up to get our deposit back. We put it off forever and finally got in there to clean it. We cleaned it like crazy- even got a carpet cleaner for the floors. We even had to buy our own paint, which absolutely infuriated me. Our landlord, whom doesn't have a great reputation around town anyhow gave us three containers and guaranteed us one of them was it. Well it wasn't and we had to go get our own. We had to go back like four times to clean everything he wanted cleaned, but hopefully it's all worth it when we get a check for $800 back!

If we don't get the deposit back I'm probably going to kick somebody's butt, just saying. I normally wouldn't be worried, but knowing our landlord and situation I just hope we get anything back. Our old neighbors whom actually live down the street now, which I think is pretty funny got a bad check back and then never fought it so they ended up getting nothing. I'm slightly worried, but I'm hoping since we put so much work into cleaning it and were good tenants he'll take that into consideration.

On the cooking/baking front I made a new chicken dish last night that was delicious and pretty easy. I ended up adding to it because it tasted pretty bland, but it turned out delicious. It's an easy chicken noodle casserole with egg noodles, cream of chicken soup, frozen peas, and then a breadcrumb/butter topping. I added quite a bit of salt and pepper and some shredded cheddar cheese for flavor. The cheese REALLY helped give it more flavor and it ended up being delicious. I also found out how to make my own breadcrumbs (mine were expired!). I took two pieces of my favorite whole wheat bread and toasted them each for about 30-45 seconds. Tore them into pieces and used the blender to put them into pieces. It only took about 25 min. in the oven, which is nice for those who are in a hurry. I give it 4/5 stars from campbellskitchen.com

That's enough for now, I'll write more later WITH PICTURES! Happy Reading!

Everybody's Fine?

So I promise I won't make this blog into a movie review website, but I figured a couple here and there would be an interesting change of pace. Matt and I own about a bazillion movies, and are huge movie buffs so I figured a couple of movie reviews might help others choose a good movie? You can choose.

Anyways, so we were going to go buy a new movie today until we remembered we still have some movies in our cabinet that we haven't watched. So we decided on "Everybody's Fine." It includes movie badass Robert DeNiro, as well as Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell, and Kate Beckinsale.

The whole premise of the movie is that the father (deniro) is all on his own after his wife died and is having all four of his children come visit from all over the country. All of them end up bailing on him and he decides that instead he'll go visit all of them.

I'll try not to give too much anyway, but he ends up visiting them all and realizes they've all been hiding tons of secrets from him. His wife was the one that talked to the children and she would listen to all of their issues, but never told him about any of them.

There's a scene towards the end where he decides to fly from Vegas to home after visiting his daughter Rosie (Barrymore) and ends up having a heart attack. During this scene you find out all of the secrets his kids have been hiding from him which seems to make the whole movie make way more sense.

As a whole this movie was alright, definitely not great. DeNiro, as usual, did a heck of a job with this role. For the most part- this movie was insanely sad. I still can't believe it came out around Christmastime. I get the whole coming together as a family during the holidays thing, but this movie was just plain depressing. It made me want to call my dad and tell him how much I love him. It also made me want to go home for Christmas that much more. If you're a sap at all though, I wouldn't recommend this movie. If you're anything like me, you'll spend most of the movie crying and feeling awful that you aren't more honest with your family.